ep 230 new year 2022.mp3

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[00:00:20] Welcome to the Fluent Show, a podcast about learning a

[00:00:25] Language or two or three and reaching your potential. My name is Kerstin Cable and I am from Fluent Language .co.uk. I have been writing and podcasting about languages for coming onto a decade now and here on the show, I wi, my co-host, my friends, my guests talk about languages, communication, curiosity and enriching our lives through the challenge of learning something new. It's lovely to have you here as a listener if you're a new listener for twenty twenty two. Shout out. Kudos to you and hello. Welcome. Love having you. And if you're a listener who's been with me for a long, long time, thank you so much. We have surpassed exceeded. Smash drew one point six million million WOW downloads recently. So that is amazing if you're still going strong. In today's episode, I have got a few notes that I wanted to share with you on the state of the podcast. A few changes coming your way for the year and for the future. And then I'll tell you a little bit about my own big project for the year languages. I may or may not be picking up, touching, leaving well alone, and I've got five great pieces of advice for you that will be so-so useful as you go into twenty twenty two, a few spins on some existing pieces of advice and a few really interesting new reflections. So before we do that, I want to give two shout outs number one to listener Isabella with her amazing German intro this episode Shout out what an accent! Kudos Isabella.

[00:02:08] Thank you so much for sending your intro! Now, if you listener think, "Well, I can do that, I can say a few sentences in another language and be on the floor and show I'd love to be on the fluent Show", Well, why don't you send me your intro? Because I would love to hear your voice. It's just nothing makes me happier. Go to fluent.show, and all you need to do is look in the navigation menu at the top and select Add your intro. And that will take you to an online form where you can submit an mp3 or a wav for other types of file. It'll tell you in effect use. And it also tells you what to say in your target. Language is really easy. It won't take you a long time, and I am ever so grateful and you'll hear your own voice on the Fluent show, so please come and be a star. Now, the other shout out that I have is to our long term sponsor, the wonderful language learning app. Clozemaster. Clozemaster is fun, responsive and it actually works. And here's how it works. It's a gamified language learning app. So far, so good, and it gives you mass exposure to vocabulary in context. So what follows master does is provide you with thousands and thousands of sentences.

[00:03:24] Not all at once, one by one, but it's really fun in over 50 languages. And I think, particularly for fluent show people, it's a wonderful choice of app to download and examine because they offer so many different languages. I found it really easy to find, for example, Welsh practice in there, and Welsh, one of my target languages, is not always that easy to find in every single course. It's particularly exciting as well to use close muster if you're an intermediate learner and you want to practice your skills. But I have found that recently, the Mandarin Mandarin Chinese language has sort of been been talking to me or I've been talking to it in English like Mandarin, and I have been sort of slowly kind of re re approaching each other and kind of tiptoeing around each other. So I had a look in the clothes master app and there is something called a fluency track, which is so suitable for me as somebody who has a fairly low level in Mandarin but still wants to practice and likes to be challenged. So if you also want to practice your skills and re-examine all that most important vocab, check out and check if they've got a fluency track in your target language to the way close masterworks is using the exercise, where you basically fill in the gap in a sentence. So it's a familiar, tried and tested, really solid exercise.

[00:04:49] It doesn't require you to learn anything new and you can practice it for free. You can try it out for free. And if you ever want to upgrade, please, please do go for the Fluent Show and use the code Fluent Show because you get a discount. And it also tells them I sent you and that works and helps me. It helps the and show keep coming to you. If you want to find out more, please had to close mastered at clozemaster.com/fluentshow where I have. Did a little video guide for you showing you how it all works, so that is for my American listeners CLOZEMASTER thank you so much. Too clozemaster have for supporting the Fluent Show. That was my shout out listener Isabella and Clozemaster our sponsor. Now let's get into a few notes and updates about the podcast before we can talk languages. Now, you know, if you're a regular listener that I have been over the last year, in 2021, I played with the idea of seasons and we had a sort of linguistics and academic season. That was the first one you might remember. I had some neuroscientists, I had a Stylistics professor. It was really interesting and we also had the online teaching season where we focused on the teaching world. And then it's sort of kind of didn't really continue into into the second half of the year.

[00:06:14] And this is partly because of the feedback I got and partly because of how I felt organizing this. So the season's idea, it helped me in some ways because it helped me break up the episodes more. But what it what one of the results was is that the learners, some of them is the feedback I got. So they didn't really like the teacher season. And the teachers started expecting a lot more episodes about teaching when actually we were more daunting into the territory and then wanting back to learning. So overall, people got a little bit confused, which wasn't my intention, and I got a little bit tired at the end of 10 episodes where I really had to queue rate rather than bringing you the joyful chaos that a fluent year usually brings you. So the season structure was really, really great, but it didn't really work when a show publishes as frequently as this one, and with a team that is really one person with a little bit of support. So for this year, it's going to be I'm going to follow on with what I said to you at the end of last year, which is I've really been talking and thinking about rigidity, and I'm going to take the rigidity out and focus on what's fun, which means we are not continuing the season concept. That was fun. But instead, I will just bring you all the interesting content a season would have brought you.

[00:07:37] But with the continuing effect of what I always think is it's called a Wundertüte in German. You know, when you've got a surprise bag grab bag what you called him a grab bag so that every week something super interesting is coming to you, but you can't always know from one week to the next what's coming? And I'll tell you what, I have such interesting guests coming up. I have such interesting episodes coming up, and because we're at the start of the year, we're actually also doing a few of our little fluent show traditions so you can expect words of the year that is coming. Lindsay and I are excited to record that you can expect a visit, the annual visit from Shannon Kennedy, which is ever so interesting. And I have a very, very cool, very big name guest penciled in. I'm excited about and we're also going to be venturing into India and just even more, even more. But let me tell you, Fluent Show is going to be seasonal or not. Season is going to be a lot of fun this year. I will continue for to look for more fun playing around opportunities to play around with the format. I've been meaning to try out segments and do segment jingles. So these are a few things that might come this year. I in my head, I have composed, I say, composed.

[00:08:53] We'll go with it. I've composed a hot potato jingle, but I just need to go back to the person who helped me with the top tools jingle and see if he can help with a hot potato jingle. Now, one other big change I wanted to just make you aware of is that The Fluent Show, which has been publishing since 2018, so it's nearly three and a half years. Over three and a half years we've been going weekly and I have found in the last year one of the reasons I tried the seasons is that that wasn't working as well for me anymore. I've got a tendency to work very, very hard and forego breaks, or I try to force breaks into there. And what I found is every time I did take my foot off the gas a little bit within a week or so, I would have super exciting ideas and have my energy back as well to really bring you a great show. And those ideas are what we need to keep this podcast fresh and interesting and special, so they're really important. And I also want to reflect the changing landscape of podcasting since 2018 when we went weekly. I am like you, a podcast listener, a fan of so many shows, and I know all too well that the landscape for content has changed in the last years. And you know, when this podcast went weekly, there wasn't as much choice.

[00:10:12] There weren't as many language shows as you have now and now. Some weeks. Things can feel frantic when I've been asking. People where they're up to with the show. It's very it's very rare for, you know, if you are up to date with the show, always you are in the minority now and I don't want to put pressure on listeners and I don't want people to lose the excitement over an episode of this show coming out because we're excited to to produce it so. I think the fortnightly format is actually really contemporary and a really good choice, and that's what we're going to do. If you're not British, fortnightly means every two weeks. So the fluent show is going to be coming to you in 2022. We're going to continue coming to you. We're going to come to you every two weeks instead of every week, which actually, having looked back at last year, we'll give you a similar amount of episodes, probably. So those are my changes. Those are my behind the scenes, and you can email me at. kerstin@fluentlanguage.co.uk. You can find me on Twitter at the Fluent Show, and I would love to hear if you've got any ideas and your reflections, guest suggestions. And I think a little bit later in the year, we're also going to do the survey now. Moving on to looking forward, I really like this sort of setting the scene podcasts.

[00:11:32] The start of the year, I wanted to tell you a few bigger projects that are coming up for me in the year. Tell you a little bit about what's going on and then go into languages and give you some tips and advice for the start of 2020. To now, in terms of big projects, I've got a few fluent related ones. Some I'm allowed or can tell you more about than others. But the headlines are number one. We are kicking off the fluent language mastermind, something I have been working on behind the scenes for quite a while have been inviting people. The members are here. Oh, we're starting the coaching calls this week and I am just over the Moon. It is a space full of dedicated, committed language learners who are ready to go deep and, you know, have a community where we really commit. We are here, we're showing up. And we're not just exchanging tips for like this book to read or this Netflix show to watch, but really examining how languages fit into our lives and how to achieve that relaxed and reliable fluency. So that is something I am incredibly overjoyed about, and I would really like to you. I would like to invite you to check it out if you haven't done it yet. The fluent language mastermind is now open for applications at the moment, so if you're interested in joining us, the doors are open and I would love to talk to you and you can learn more at fluent language .co.UK slash mastermind.

[00:13:05] You can submit your application there, or you can message me and ask me any questions that you've got about it. Now that's the mastermind. And like I said, you're very much invited. It's it's going to be brilliant. I'm working on these coaching tools and I could just tell you so much about it now. Secondly, just wanted to give you a heads up that this year we're we're going to be in just two months once again getting together for the Women in Language Conference, which I co-organized with Lindsey Williams and Shannon Kennedy. And that is also coming up. We are again in our March timeslot. The closest we can get to the International Women's Day and women in language, if you've never encountered it before, is an online conference where all the speakers are women non-binary. So basically not men, maybe for obvious reasons in the world, and the tickets are absolutely open to everybody. So if you are not a woman, not non-binary, don't feel like you are not invited, you're going to be hearing from such a wonderful, diverse, interesting group of people, as you do every single year. We're now in our fifth year, believe it or not, organizing women in language and you are absolutely welcome. Welcome. Welcome. So just pencil it in. We are aiming for the 3rd to the 6th of March with women in language.

[00:14:26] Now, two more things that I'm going to be doing is if you're not aware, I have created a little course on starting a podcast. It's called Podcasting one on one, and it's now had Its first cohort of learners through people have started their podcasts as a result of taking this course. It's gone really, really well, and at the moment, it lives at fluent language.co.uk Slash podcasting one on one. So one of my projects and goals for this year as I tidy up and move websites around and do quite quite big projects behind the scenes is also to give this podcasting course its own little home, its own little world, so that in future you will be able to share it and join it separately from fluent language because it's only loosely language related. Although I do believe creating a podcast if you're a language learner is a really fun, interesting and actually very beneficial thing to do. I've got a blog article on the blog at Fluent Language, where I'm sharing a few ideas, and I think we did a podcast episode about it again last year, so I'll pop that in, the show notes. Now, finally, I am also going to be working. I'm already saying so much, right? But I'm hoping to be dedicating a significant amount of time this year to writing my next book different kind of books, slightly different book writing process, and still feels very daunting to say it.

[00:15:58] So I won't tell you anything more, but I do plan to write a book that you can then read. That's it for me, and I hope you've enjoyed this overview over the next year now in my personal life. To be honest, I haven't really got anything mind blowing to share. I'm hoping that the world is going to open up even more, that we'll be able to travel again, get together. I would love to attend a polyglot in-person event. Very, very soon, I would love to volunteer again in Wales, which has been always such a language boost, such a motivator to just steward or marshal at an event. It's such a great thing and I would love to just attend a few events and go to a few gigs. These are my these are my hopes. Please, please tell me yours. I would love to hear from you again if you're a listener to show you. So welcome to tell me a bit more. I read every message if you email kerstin@fluentlanguage.co.uk or if you want to tweet me again at the Fluent Show and I'm also on Instagram, where you can send me a direct message to at Kerstin underscore fluent. Kerstin underscore fluent. Now, let's talk about languages before I let you go and skip happily into the new year.

[00:17:20] My own languages. And OK, so I'm going to be mixing up my own language goals, I think with the pieces of advice that I have for you. So I'll tell you, I'll tell you about each one. My first piece of advice for you and my first sort of note bit I want to take I want to give you in January 2020 is that there is no need to start learning a new language just because it's the first of January. Someone recently messaged me and, you know, I think they were just trying to make conversation. I said, Oh, what are you learning any new languages for the new year? And I thought, Well, no, you know, just because it's a new year, that doesn't mean I have to. Instantly come up with a huge big plan and change everything that's already working for me, and I think sometimes we attach more value and we get more excited about the novelty. So I wanted to share my own. Language plan for for the year, which is dominated by Welsh. I know I've been learning Welsh for like six or seven years, but I'm at level B2. I'm going to be smashing into the sea levels not too far into the future. I have got an evening class with lovely people that I can attend once a week. But things are going well, so this continues to be my priority because I'm starting to see no, I'm not starting to see traction.

[00:18:45] I am seeing traction the same way. I've been seeing traction for years. Very slow, but just getting a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better. And I enjoyed it so much. So why would I? Why would it? Would this be any less interesting? Why would this be any less exciting to me then, starting with a brand new language from zero? And don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't get excited about lots of other languages, but it's just something about sticking with this and seeing, Oh yeah, you know, it's getting better, even though I'm not. I'm, you know, I've essentially got a full time job, I'm not I'm not dedicating my whole life to it, but just to kind of stick with it and stay consistent. It is. It's gold, it's so, so good. And I love trusting myself and saying, Well, I've decided I want to do this, so I'm going to continue with doing it. Wow. So there is no need to start learning a new language just because it's January the 1st, and especially for those of you who might feel like you might feel doubtful about what you're doing, might feel like what you're doing is not good enough. Maybe you're not learning enough. Maybe you're not, you know, maybe you're not doing enough if you don't do these other three languages on top. Just know that.

[00:20:02] Just know that you know you pick it up in your own time and it can be your own personal first of January. Number two, this is from something that I saw on Twitter, and I've recently seen quite a bit of bad language advice on Twitter. And instead of starting a big fight with people in the comments, I thought I would just bring it here. And this was from somebody who I won't call it bad advice. It's it's not bad advice, but to me, it is far too categorical somebody declaring that they are doing their very best to avoid their native language in all their listening, and they will only listen to things in their target language. And to me, that's great. That's immersive. You know, that's going to give you the results. And for some people, it works. But it is. It is so categorical and it is so difficult to follow through and so challenging that I just wanted to share with you, share with the world. You know what? You're allowed to listen to things in your native language, if you like, and even if you do that. For, I don't know, twenty three hours to twenty four hours in the day or if you're doing it for, I don't know how many hours there are in a week, but you know, if you're doing it for almost all the time in a week and you're only listen to your target language for two or three hours in a week, don't worry, you will still get there.

[00:21:25] The idea of immersion, as in this purity is so overrated is so high pressure. It is so. Optimized that I think we really need to just sometimes push back and say, look, you know what, if you're doing this in a really chilled out way, then that's absolutely fine and there is no you're not allowed to do this, you know, you're not allowed to do that. You will follow your own kind of North Star with these languages. So don't worry about this too much. Don't make it. Don't make things too hard for yourself. So tip number three or piece of advice number three is about commitment. I've already said, you know, I'm sort of committed. I'm like in a almost marriage with Welsh, you know, like my long term relationship, we're engaged now. Me and Welsh, this is this is this is becoming really serious. And there is such joy in there. So I just wanted to share two things about commitment that I've been reflecting on recently because like you, at the start of things, I'm quite scared of commitment. I'm quite, you know, worried I was just going to be taken up. Too much time, too much resources. Am I going to fail? Am I going to be not able to make a go of it? And that means when you commit to something by saying, I will do this big thing like learning a language, often it's easy to set it up, just dabbling.

[00:22:46] I'm just trying this out. I'm just playing with it and then not getting off the ground, but sometimes even against like a wish, a deer wish that you have. So something that I have been reflecting on is this idea that commitment doesn't have to be scary, and that is something I wanted to share with you because it really pays off. And if you can find a way to say I'm committed to this and still allow yourself to to have freedom in there and to not sort of. Push and not put this massive pressure on yourself, then you can do really, really well with commitment. That doesn't mean you sign your life away, but it just means you are here. You are doing this now and you will give it your best shot. It doesn't mean you have to be perfect and you have to be the best one. It just means you're giving this your best shot. Now, piece of advice, number four. And this is something that, again, I have I have experienced in the last year. I have long known and you maybe have long known a community really matters in language learning. That might be why you enjoy this show because you get to hang out with me and I get to hang out with you virtually in a sort of low pressure way.

[00:24:01] That might be why if you've been to women in language before you enjoy the women in Language Conference, and it might be something that is, you know, something that you found online, a lot of language learners don't have a lot of friends IRL who are also language learners. So this is something that really matters to people and it can bring you a big boost. But what I found last year is that I got into some situations where the online community, the social media community, actually made me feel sometimes anxious, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes like there is a little bit too much pressure, a little bit too much opinion. And I have learned over the last year how to withdraw at times when I have needed to withdraw. So the piece of it's not really advice, but the kind of note I have for you is that if you at some point want to assert your boundaries, it doesn't have to be completely shutting down something, but it might just be an unfollow. It might be a mute somewhere. It might be restricting comments on what you post so that people can't share their opinion with you. You might not be ready for that. You might not want that. That is absolutely OK because I think social media sometimes can make you feel like you and your work and your efforts are the property of everybody else. But in truth, you are still the property of yourself and you get to sort of set the ground rules and they don't have to be determined by what some kind of system says should be the way that we all interact with each other.

[00:25:45] So these are just kind of thoughts that I've been having, and I found that my own. I don't want to go as far as saying mental health, but my own happiness has improved while I'm still benefiting from the wonders and the joys of language learning community. And at this point, I also want to give a shout out to the people in the Fluent Language Learners Facebook group, which is my customers and clients Facebook groups. So if you're a student of mine, come and join us because you are really generous and a really wonderful, supportive and very not spammy group of people. So I love interacting with you, and I also love interacting with you, people on Instagram. So social media make it work for you. Don't feel that you have to be. Submitting to every single requirement that a an app might have for you for the sake of getting that community and I'm a final note is about goals. And this is a funny one that is a thought I I want to develop over the coming year, but it's something about goals, intentions and ambitions. And you know, you've often thinking the smart goal, right? So. So we all do like we set ourselves to goal the measurable one.

[00:27:03] The problem with the measure will go sometimes is that you can really easily measure when you haven't achieved it. And I want to share with you today that, you know, sometimes the purpose of a goal isn't to achieve it. Sometimes the purpose of setting a goal, even a measurable, you know, specific bloody blah one is to take a step towards the direction of that goal. And taking that step is something you wouldn't have done had you not set the goal. So it is a useful thing to do if you are feeling worried right now, or if you are a kind of person who gets a little bit of discomfort and anxiety around the idea of setting goals for yourself and you actually want to. You know, you want to be ambitious, but you don't want to fail and you don't want to feel like you're failing. I encourage you to set the goal anyway and celebrate even if you don't achieve it and look at whether you took a step towards it that you wouldn't have otherwise taken because I have found in in business, but also in my languages. This is often true like am I take a big challenge and I don't achieve the challenge, but I still took like about eight more steps than I would have normally done, and I still benefited from it. So those are my kind of tips and also my behind the scenes off the floor and show.

[00:28:23] Welcome. Welcome. Welcome again to the new year. And I've got lots and lots of things in coming down the pike, coming down the pike that we can look forward to. Just a final note. Did you know that you can also get a whole library of exciting courses on language, learning, mindset and strategies from me? They range from grammar and vocab to productivity and planning, and these resources are your start into a brilliant new language learning year something for everyone, including a free video training that you can get to help you through language chaos and learn a language when your life gets chaotic. You can get all of that at fluent language Echo Dot UK slash my courses, my Dash courses, and I just wanted to invite you to come along and take what you need and help yourself. And with that, thank you so much for listening to the first floor and show of 2020 to as always, you can get in touch with me and I would love it. If you leave the podcast, a review or a star rating, send your intro or just interact with us in any other way that you see fit except shouting abuse at us. Please don't do that. Next week, in two weeks, oh my gosh, fortnightly in two weeks I will be back with Lindsey Williams and we're going to be looking at the words of the year. Twenty twenty one. Until then, thank you so much for listening. I wish you a great time. Good bye.